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D: Or what did they, teach you and so forth? What did they tell you about

white people?

E: Well, I never did get out amongst'the white people. I didn't know

nothing about them. My daddy always sit down probably if he had time

and tell us his old story about something or another, you know, way

back. But 1we were so little we didn't even know, understand what he

was talking about, and after I got up old enough to know,why,he got

out to work and I never had any. chance, you know, to pay any attention
0
toA much. what he was talking about.

D: Well, how dq you feel about white people in your young days?

E: Well, I'didn't know nothing about them. I didn't know one thing about

them. I never had seen none of them much until I saw a white man PuI j

LtJc fmrcftrl1 Q qo5hY>%. except Mr.' Elislah Brown.
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D; In other words your contact with the white man was far removed.
I l lI
You didn't come in contact with. him very often.

E: Not in later years probably even after I got grown and got to
I I '. t I i .1 1 I
working out in publte work, I began to talk with these white people
I I i I i I i.+ +. i l i. i. r' ,I ) i > L .' y i 1 1 ,
and colored people.;

D: Well, now%'in your boyhood days what was the most important thing that

you' look forward to? Say when you were twelve, fifteen years old

o or something, what was the most important thing that you'd always

look forward to?

E: Well, I' didn't have no particular things, working all the time in

the new ground ditching, my daddy would have te a ditching and a

clearing 'and all the time.

D: Well', didn't you hve, look forward to ioing something? To have a

little funl?

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E: Well, we didn't know nothing about nothing like that much.

D: Well, you'd look forward to 'going to the beach, wouldn't you?

E: Well, that was years after, well, later on after that. I didn't

go but one time when I was a boy. I went one time.

D: It thought maybe you went every year.

E: No, no. One time till I got married and got grown and went myself.

D: And what did you think the beach was like when you first stared

as a boy?'

E: Well, it just looked like a big ocean of water there. You...

D: You have never read about it, have you?

E: I've never read about it nor saw'it. We got on our mules back

and rode tp and down the beach. We enjoyed that. That was good

riding. You get up there and you could run a mile down the beach,

you know, was on your mule's back, back and ride all you wanted to.

D: Did the puIllen' fsh out with the netsnlike they do today?

E: Yes,q they had nets then. Yes, they had the same thing then that they've

got how,....net on the ground. They'd pick them up and stand them up

or fit4': tiem up in barrels and thingsi'you know, just about abet

like they do now, r

D: Now when you arrived at the beach, of course, there was lots of people

there fror4 other places and so forth, did you all kindly get in your
!
own group or did all of you mix together with the whites and the black

and all? How did you do?

E: At the beach? Well, there would iiever'be nobody down there.

1 :h 1

r I I II
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I, '' i :'-1 !, t.t.: i u 1 V F -r l 1,. ,,b ,l y Ilt Iw n i l k .,
I would never see anybody around there then except the people that'd
be coming out there, country down there.
D: Well, there'd be people there from other places.
E: Well, there'd be very few, very few people there.
D: Would you all associate With the other people there?
E; We was always getting in a group ourselves and they'd get over in
another group and that's the way it would work out.
B: You didn't mix much with them?
E: No, we didn't bother with them. They didn't bother us and we didn't
bother with them.
D: So you had your first school. How did the Board of Education feel
about giving you supplies and so forth, things that you needed for
this schooling'you had asked them for?
E: Well, I didn't know. You had to go to school long enough to know just...
D: No, I mean your school here in Hoke County, how did...
E: Oh, they was willing to go out ahead and
help me to get the school organized. Told me to find a place --Ld-
build it and I could have it.
D: But your school was never like the whites, like that big brick building
here in Jacobs Point. There was quite a difference between those schools,
wasn't it?
E: Oh, yes./ Well,Aephow they built' that school, they didn't use it but
about two years before '4 '. a, and went that Rapan Bf. So
we didn't get no school till they built ...
D: Well, now when they built this big brick white school building at
Sr. *
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